The Best Laptop - Tips to Bag the Best One

Posted by admin

October 25, 2009

Buying a portable laptop today is not as easy as it may seem. This is mostly due to the fact that the price of a portable laptop has dropped significantly from what it was about two years back. Moreover, the various price ranges have now been banded so closely together that they overlap considerably. Under the circumstances, the choice of what to buy and how much to spend becomes extremely difficult. Typically a US$ 30 upgrade can get you a lot more on your portable laptop today than it ever could. Hence, you need to know how to decide what is best for you. Read on to find out how to make the best choice in an overcrowded market.

Plan your requirements first. At the outset, you need to have a clear picture of what you need. You may use your portable laptop for office use or as an accessory to your desktop. You may be a gamer or someone who works on multimedia. You may need your laptop to be ultraportable and have a long battery life. Whatever your requirement is, it is best to make a checklist at first before diving into the sea of laptops.

Plan your specifications. The thing that you need to think of first while buying a laptop is the specific use that you are going to put it into. The needs vary from one user to another. While someone needs it for business, the other needs it for leisure. Whatever be the case, you need to determine what purpose it is going to serve and accordingly decide on the configuration. It will help you in zeroing on the machine of your choice.

The 8-11″ range of ultra portable laptop segment. Perfect for Internet on the go but very little else. The 13″ range of laptops that have a good resolution and usability with a lot of portability. Go for it if you need to work on the move all the time. 14″ segment is the sweet spot in terms of portability and usability, it offers a good screen size without being extremely cumbersome. The 15″ range is good if you do not move about too much and like to watch the occasional movie. It is heavy but viewing is a pleasure with a high definition screen. The 16″-18″ range or more are sort of an entertainment system in a portable package. They are not really meant for people on the go.

Along with the screen size, it is really important to look at the screen resolution in a portable laptop. A 15″ laptop with a low screen resolution such as 1280×800 will generally have a poor quality display.

The configuration is also most significant. If the price of the portable laptop is relatively low, that does not imply that the processor and in-built memory is of poor quality. If the laptop is worth anywhere above USD 700, then it will come along with the latest version of processor from Intel or AMD. These processors are energy savers and give relatively high battery back up. Now, a minimum of 2GB memory has become basic requirement to run the system fast. However, if the processor is Intel Atom, a 9″ laptop can be run with 1 GB memory too.

It is also important to take note of the resolution when you consider buying a laptop. In order to make the viewing experience a truly exceptional one, maintain a balance between the resolution and screen size.

Choose a gaming and multimedia laptop. A portable laptop is hardly the ultimate gaming machine. However, nowadays, discrete graphics processing units are readily available on notebooks which promise good 3D performance. You shouldn’t expect desktop level gaming performance, however. Moreover, a discrete GPU will seriously reduce the battery life because of a high power draw. However, for watching high definition and blu-ray content, it will definitely be a boost.

Making the choice about your portable laptop is important. As stated before, your needs dictate your choice. However, if you are not going really high end, expect a portable laptop with a balance of all features to cost around US$1500-2000.

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